Dysthemic, that's what I am

Almost invariably when somebody sends me something with the comment that it is “food for thought&rdquo, my reaction tends to be “it's actually crap already”.

I'm not quite sure what to think about this extract from Barbara Ehrenreich's book Dancing in the Streets, discussing how depression has become increasingly more prevalent in the Western world since the 16th Century. It is definitely in the food-for-thought category, but is it nutricious? I'm not convinced that the reason people are depressed is that they don't party enough, but the discussion about the creation of the individual and how this allows oneself to get depressed is interesting. But what says that an entire group couldn't be depressed?